Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Some thoughts on Rick Snyder

Polling the 2010 elections has produced a lot of wow moments as we crunch the data to produce our numbers- almost all in the sense of 'wow, I can't believe how unpopular that person is.'

One exception to that rule was when we polled the Michigan Governor's race around Memorial Day. That poll made me say wow because Rick Snyder's numbers with independents were unlike anything I'd seen for a politician this cycle. I'm pretty amazed when any politician is on positive ground with them period- Snyder was at a +28 spread with them at 37/9.

It was a similar story with the horse race numbers on that poll- we're used to Republicans leading with independents in pretty much every race but not by the kind of 43 point margin Snyder had over Virg Bernero at that point at 53-10.

I think there's an argument that Rick Snyder is the strongest Republican candidate in the country this year, period. We'll see how the general election and of course the governing goes but he has the potential to become a major national star in the next few years.

Never thought my home town of Ann Arbor would get one of its residents elected Governor and even more surprised it's a Republican but the weird has become the norm this year.

5 comments:

I'd like to point out that we were one of only two firms to have Snyder winning the primary, and the first, way back in late May/early June. Most had Hoekstra up, some by big margins even in the final weeks.